Spring break trip to Myrtle Beach

So we got in to Myrtle Beach in one piece, all checked in into the Grande Shores resort in a not so grande room. Our flights weren't the best of all, but they got us there. I had a window seat towards the back of my US Airways flight from San Francisco to Charlotte, and there was a family with three babies sharing the row with me. The two older girls took turns wailing, while the younger boy thought they were talking to him and tried to respond by mimicking their wails.

I ended up staying awake for the most part, but that meant that I got to see the most amazing blood red crescent moonrise. It was about a quarter in, and red at the rise turning orange, yellow and white as it got higher. Awesome. I fell asleep after that, and woke up when we reached Charlotte.

There was no food served on the flight, but I'd had dinner at home before leaving for the airport, so was okay.

We got in to Charlotte at about 7:00am, which was 4am on the west coast. I ran off to the other end of the airport for my next flight to Myrtle Beach. This flight was short and fairly uneventful. As we landed, I got a view of the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament building.

Met bluesmuse  at the airport. She'd landed a few minutes earlier.

Once out, we checked our options. Our hotel check in time was at 4pm, which means we had a day to kill, and no way to get around. We thought about renting scooters or mopeds, but the bags would have been a problem, so we ended up renting a car. Also got about 4 maps from various tourist information centres at the airport, and all of them were useless.

Thanks to Yahoo! Trip Planner, we'd more or less listed out all the places that we wanted to go to. Just hadn't figured out how yet. Woodhaven pancake house  was on the list for breakfast because it was close to the airport, so we decided to head there. Unfortunately, none of the maps had anything other than the King's Highway on them. Didn't realise that there was free wifi at the airport otherwise I'd have checked things online.

Drove around for a long while until we hit the right King's Highway (there are two), and took a guess about which direction to go in. Got lucky, and found Woodhaven on our left. The pancake house has a webcam mounted on its roof giving you a feed of things around. It's called the wafflecam . I stood in front of it and called up nvivek  for his birthday. He couldn't see me though.

They also had free wifi at the restaurant, so we checked up our options, and decided to head to Murrel's Inlet. Headed south till we found signs for Murrel's Inlet, and followed them. The area is full of pubs and seafood places, and every now and then, an opening to get down to the water's edge. We stopped at one of these and took in the view and the fresh air.

Sat there for a while, feeling the sun, which was good after chilly California and freezing Boston. It was very calming, and I'd have caught up on my sleep there if I wasn't getting sunburnt.

After Murrel's inlet, we headed back up north, and stopped at a place to do some souvenir shopping. Nice to get that out of the way up front so that the rest of the vacation is open for fun stuff :) Got a couple of T-Shirts, and I got a hat for myself to add to my collection.

Headed further north after that, but decided to drive down to Ocean Blvd instead. Stopped at Surfside beach, and sat on the pier for a while looking out at the beach and the sea. You'd never believe that the Atlantic ocean could be so calm and azure. We left once we started burning up, and decided to check out Broadway at the beach.

By the time we pulled in to the parking lot though, I felt as though I'd fall asleep right there, so we decided to skip that plan and head off to the hotel to try our luck.

The Grande Shores resort is in North Myrtle beach, but it was a short drive on the highway. We got there, and checked in without a problem. Our room was on the ground floor (that's the first floor for all ye Americans out there), facing the sea. It was so cool, you could just open the French window and walk out onto the beach. It would have been even better if they weren't renovating the pool section that was between our room and the beach. All the same, sitting in the room with the window open brought in some lovely sea breeze and the soothing sound of waves on the beach.

And then I was asleep.

(X-Posted to bluesmoon, leave comments there )